Sapa Trekking

10th August

Arrival in Lao Cai at 6 am was painful for a minute or two. As a few hundred zombies stepping off a train all went for their respective buses, we caught ours without any real problems. We started our 1 hour journey into the hills and around the cliffs, the view was getting pretty nice from up there, and on arrival to the hotel meeting point we were greeted by a tribe of kids, and their mothers and whoever else was around the town. Their screams of excitement was noticeable, they definitely have seen tourists before, and thats for sure. Everyone was trying not to make too much eye contact at first, while we got our bearings and were split into groups.
But after breakfast, and after getting settled into our walking crocs and packing our bag for the overnight homestay, we were allocated a group guide, her name was ZHI. Or as she is bettered known after the trip as Cra-zhi! But away we went, in fact we started off with not just one guide but the whole tribe was walking with us from town to the hills. We all got asked the same questions one by one, "Whats your name?", "How old are you?", "Where you come from?", these are all the words that most of them knew, so you can imagine the 4 hour trek ahead of us. But as it happened they were all trying to be nice to us, and we also had spent a lot of time talking to the rest of the trekkers on the same tour as us. So all was well. The scenery was amazing, all the beautiful rice fields and mountainous terrain was great. We went through villages along the way, one family even invited us to come in to their little crib and have a look around. We could see that beans was cooking for lunch in a pot over an open fire, we all became a big happy family. This all of course has to end sometime, after all there is a price to pay for people to walk with you for many kilometers and up hills. So before settling for lunch, all the hill people turned from friendly to money thirsty bloodhounds. They whipped out their handmade quilts, wall hangings, pillow cases etc and surrounded their walking companions. We ended up buying a few things, well it was easier than trying to get away plus the things are hand made and pretty nice.

Angela's Best Friend

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Sapa Woman and Baby
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Kids doing what kids do

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Angela & David

+ the 2 very nice ladies, much older than us, that helped us walk down the mountain

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After lunch, we had different hill people walking us, and so the same outcome, same questions and same result. More selling, more buying and more of the same. But don't let me scare you, it was a great day, and the people were fun to walk with. David even got a few nicknames...first 'Monkey man', then 'Monster man' then 'Stupid monkey', but they were only kids, and i'm sure they didn't mean it (or did they???). One thing for sure anyway, they did not like his beard.
The day finished with a lot of pain in our legs, after the 10km trek over the mountains and rice fields, and a great feast was cooked for us by the Dzay people. Then some 'Happy Water (rice wine)' followed and some more getting to know the fellow travellers, and of course some sleep too. Next day still another 12km of trekking to do.

Yes, we did walk nearly all the way to the last mountain!

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Angela

Scary business

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Angela & David